


Contextual History (Forgiveness is a Four Letter Word)

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: 2016 US Presidential Election, A bit of Mac whump, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Current Day AU, F/M, Light Angst, Prompt Bracket Fic, Third Party Wooing, Will makes a mess of things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28397346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: He’s quiet, not saying anything, but he’s not contemplative like he had been earlier, he’s obviously waiting to see what else she has to say, what else she wants to throw at him, but it takes her a while, turning his words over in her head to realize.“What’s that even supposed to mean?” She scrunches up her face and sets her drink down on the bar as he turns back toward her.“I’m a jerk. Don’t give up on me. I’m trying. Or possibly just what it sounds like, I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Contextual History (Forgiveness is a Four Letter Word)

**Author's Note:**

> Current day AU (everything is +4 years e.g. 2016 election is election night at the end of season 2). Will never talks to Charlie or Mac at the end of the episode. Things pick up from there.
> 
> There's supposed to be a 3rd party wooing element to this, but as there's none of the usual tropes associated with that, the connection is a bit more nebulous as seems to be the case with most of the fics in this set. 
> 
> Warnings for minor language. No major spoilers since this is pretty solidly AU, but there are some minor relationship/pairing spoilers if you haven't seen Election Night (2.09). There are quite a few references to political events, I've tried not to get tied up in any of it, but it is there if that's a concern.

* * *

Context hasn’t died and neither has history.  
— The Weeds Podcast

If I can't have my cake  
And I can't eat it too  
Well, I guess the sound of your voice  
And the aching will just have to do  
— Joy Williams, _The Trouble With Wanting_

It hadn’t been a complete surprise, nothing about tonight had really been a surprise. She’d been waiting for this for months, and if it’d turned out like she’d expected but not like she’d planned, then there really isn’t anything to say about that. It was the dawn of a new era in more ways than one, so if she’s a little gutted, crying to herself walking home from work at 4 AM she really shouldn’t be surprised, but she is, not by the Square, empty, finally, only at this time of night, but by how empty she feels, how alone.

She’d finally forgiven herself, finally began to accept the possibility that she’d be staying, here, in a newsroom, in the city and now she was back to where she’d started, but without the optimism that had propelled her through the door moments before there had been breaking news out of Fort Hood two and a half years ago.

“Mac,” she startles a bit, surprised to hear him so close, surprised that he hadn’t called to her from across the street. It may be the middle of the night, but anyone he might have disturbed would’ve cursed the tourists, rolled over and gone back to sleep.

She keeps moving, crossing against the light, and he takes a couple of quick steps to keep up with her, trail behind her.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

“You’re talking.” She points out, fishing for her keys as she approaches her building.

“Five minutes?”

“I don’t have to listen to you anymore.” Another reminder that isn’t helping dislodge the lump in her throat.

“I know.” He pauses and she hears him stop walking for a moment. “I’m sorry about tonight.”

“I’m not.” She says although she is and he takes a couple of steps, farther behind her than he has been but still lingering.

“Please.”

She sighs, yanking open the door and then holding it ajar, waiting until she hears him step forward to slip inside and release it.

It’s a close call, him catching the door before it clicks shut, so he only just makes it into the elevator before the doors press together.

“I fucked up. I got mad.” He’s talking as she pushes open the door to her apartment and she turns to frown at him, shut him up for a second so she can get inside and discard her shoes, toss her blazer onto the closest flat surface, drop her purse onto the kitchen counter.

“Shit.” She’d forgotten she’d been crying and by the tone of his voice she knows that hasn’t escaped his notice. “I fucked up and I’m sorry.”

“I asked you to fire me. You did. Conscious cleared. Next.” She makes the pronouncement setting her phone on the table next to the TV where he can see it counting down, four forty five, forty four.

“You were great tonight. Spectacular.”

“Flattery?” She doubts that’s what he’s going for but that’s the last thing she wants to hear tonight. She doesn’t need the details of what she’s giving up, she can contend with those later.

“No. I—”

He’s usually better under pressure than this, but it’s late and she knows they’re both tired, knows she’s being more dismissive, less argumentative than she normally was.

“Leona’s not going to accept your resignation.”

“I’m not resigning. You fired me.”

“Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t mean it—”

“I’m going in to pack up my stuff in a couple of hours. I’ll give Jim a heads up so you won’t have to explain. It won’t bite you in the ass.”

“It already is. Mac. You can’t leave.”

“I already did.”

“No.” He says it softly, not because he isn’t sure, she’s never heard him sound so sure, but because of how dangerous it is, how explosive the word is.

“You don’t want to do that.” She doesn’t know why she’s warning him. It’s clear he knows what he’s saying, what he’s threatening to do, pitting his word against hers knowing Charlie knew how upset she’d been about not being able to leave, knowing Leona knew it too. Eventually in the end they might let her go, but she wouldn’t leave untarnished. He knew that.

“No, I don’t.”

“You can’t.” She says slowly, but even before she turns around she knows it’s not an entirely empty threat. He looks gutted, but there’s nothing to suggest he’s bluffing, nothing to suggest he’s anything but resolved.

“I would rather not.”

“I would rather not.” She echos back to him, jabbing at her phone to stop the countdown. “Every day for six years—”

“That’s not true.”

“Every day for two and a half—”

“No.”

“Let me finish.” She glares and he looks away, lets her speak. “You wake up hating me. You can’t forgive me. I fucked up and we both have to live with that. I’m going. Maybe this time we can both move on.”

“Mac—”

“Don’t you dare tell me no.”

“You know—”

“No. I don’t. I don’t fucking know and you know what? It doesn’t matter because you’re never going to see me again. I don’t need to understand.”

“Mac.”

“Time’s up.” She knocks her phone down the console toward the windows. “You can see yourself out.”

He looks at her, looks at the way she can’t meet his eye and presses his eyes shut, holds his breath for a minute. “I’ll have Charlie stop by. I’ll talk to Jim. Just— OK.” He sighs more to himself, “OK.”

*

“You look like hell.”

She rolls her eyes and steps back to let him into the apartment. She’d been up until the sun had started to rise; she’d only just managed to drag herself back out of bed and make coffee. “It’s noon on Wednesday, I’m in my pajamas, in an overpriced apartment, praying I can find someone to sublet. What did you expect me to look like?”

“Headed out of town?” Charlie takes a seat, propping his feet up on her coffee table as she regards him.

“Will told you why you’re here didn’t he?”

“He told me he’s a fucking idiot.”

“That’s not much to go on.”

“I have the details. He’s a bit desperate.”

“That’s his problem.”

“It’s a little bit my problem.”

It’s hard to be mad at Charlie. She’d known it would be, knew that’s why Will had sent him here instead of either of them insisting she come into the office. She’d been trying to steel herself against the inevitable look of disappointment; she hadn’t expected pained understanding.

“I’m leaving.”

“Is that really what you want?”

“I just said—” He waits for her to finish, but she looks away to brush tears off her cheeks, the ones she can’t seem to stop from falling. “He fired me.”

“Because you asked him to.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Maybe not.”

“You’re really pissing me off.”

Charlie’s eyebrows rise, climb higher. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

“He, fuck,” she turns to brace her hand against the corner of the kitchen counter. It’s harder to breathe past the tightness in her chest than she’d thought it would be. She is angry, she’s furiously pissed, but that’s a damp drizzle compared to the overwhelming grief that keeps sneaking up on her.

“He threatened to,” she can’t get the words out, can’t make herself say them when it feels so impossible.

“He told me he said he’d go back on his word.”

“Say I was lying.” She finally manages, glancing over, and Charlie’s eyebrows settle back into place.

“That doesn’t sound like Will.” It sounds sympathetic. It sounds like the nagging voice in her head. She doesn’t say anything. “He’s grasping at straws.”

“That’s not fucking—”

“He doesn’t want to lose you, Mac.”

“It’s nice of him to decide that now.” She straightens up and steps into the kitchen, pulling out a glass and running the tap with a sharp constellation of sounds.

“I don’t think—”

“It certainly didn’t sound like he felt that way last night.” She cuts him off, carrying the glass of water over to the window where she sits perched on the arm of a chair staring out across Times Square, across the ever moving mob of people.

“He mentioned that.”

“And you’re still defending him.”

“Last night was a blow, a big one but we're still here. Now isn’t the time to give up.”

“What if it's not about that?”

“It's always about that. I told the staff you called in. Jim’s expecting you tomorrow. If you haven’t changed your mind by then Leona will be in my office at nine, you can explain this to her.” And that was it. He doesn’t ask her if she understands, just waits for her to nod and takes his leave. 

*

It's been a couple of days and they all look exhausted, even Jim has barely cracked a smile. Maggie had tried to make a joke but had quickly cut herself off with a mumbled apology when Mac hadn't been quick enough to muster an apologetic smile, so the rundown meeting had ended as somberly as it had started and she'd retreated back to her office before Jim could think twice about letting her go.

She's sitting with her chin cupped in her hand, elbow propped on her desk when she hears her door hiss open.

Don doesn't say anything, just rounds her desk and leans back against the shelf behind them.

“Sloan’s worried about you.” He proffers and she feels a smile flicker across her face.

“Did you finally ask her out?”

“I'm not at liberty to discuss the status of our relationship.”

She hums, mustering a small smile and turns to see him flash one of his own, a grin that says he knows she knows exactly what he’s implying.

“She’s worried about me, but not about Will?”

“He’s been quiet but it’s hard to tell with him. Should she be worried?”

“I—” Mac bites her lip and then sighs. “We both said some things the other night and maybe I’m being a little pig headed about it. He— It’s not like I’m expecting him to say anything.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Overreacting?” She smiles sarcastically. “To Will. I think you’ve seen enough of that.”

“I can’t judge the proportionality.” Don offers her another brief smile. “But it’s never been without cause. If you’re upset there’s a reason.”

“So you’re here to what?”

“I thought you might prefer me to Sloan’s meddling.”

“All right.”

“We don’t have to, you know, I thought you’d want to know though. Be careful around Sloan if you’re not ready to talk about it.”

*

They’d covered the inauguration on Friday but they’d spent most of the broadcast on other things. It was news after all, so she’s seen the footage, definitely seen the footage, even before she’d watched it again and again over the weekend hoping she’d missed something. Even as she’d called Ben and asked him to replay the press briefing for her she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen hoping she’d missed something.

“You want to see it again?” She can hear Ben’s voice, distant now that she’s pulled the phone from her ear. She considers responding, but she sets the phone back in the cradle still staring, feeling as shell shocked as she had on Saturday.

“You all right?”

She can’t remember him knocking but he must have; he’s been making a habit of it the last few months, carefully holding to respectful boundaries while she tries to excise the hole in her chest.

“I—” She swallows as he perches on the cabinet beside the bank of monitors, sitting just within her field of vision.

“Journalism’s dead?” He hazards a guess and she coughs out a laugh.

“Democracy.” She corrects, finally managing to turn away, not so much from the sight of the continuing press briefing, but from him.

“Mac.”

“He knows he’s lying. He knows. He’s spent the last two days being contradicted by every major outlet.”

“It’s a test of loyalty.” Will doesn’t sound phased by the fact, but he hadn’t looked particularly pleased when he’d walked in so she knows that isn’t an entirely fair assessment. “We can talk about that tonight, bring someone on to—”

“That would sound partisan, sound like we’re bitter about—”

“Since when do we care about—” He doesn’t seem offended by the insinuation, but she cuts him off anyway.

“We can’t do our jobs if—”

“Nothing’s changed, Mac. We’re still trying to do the same thing, the same way.”

“Everything’s changed.” She sighs, relents, knowing when she looks over that he knows exactly what she means.

*

She hadn’t expected the barrage of news that had come through over the course of the week, let alone the executive order that had left them scrambling for facts as they were going to air, protesters flooding into airports up and down the coast. She’s still trying to process it all, sort through the implications, for the country and her weekend, and so it feels like she’s moving in slow motion packing up her office for the night, sorting through the scattered papers she and Jim had discarded over the course of the afternoon.

It’s late now. She can see the studio lights, the extra lights in the bullpen turned on again for Elliot’s show as she tucks another stack of papers into her bag.

“I thought you’d be out of here.”

He’s leaning against her open door with the ghost of a smile watching the way her fingers flutter over the newly formed piles of paper.

“Trying.” She agrees offhandedly. “Did you need— Did I miss,” no, she stops herself when he shakes his head.

“I wanted to see how you were doing. It’s been,” he shrugs. “I thought this week would never end.”

“Marathon or a sprint?” She lets a bit of his smile catch on. She’s too tired to try and stop it and he seems relieved enough to see it that she knows he won’t press her for anything else.

“If this is a marathon. I’m investing in Nike.” He chuckles at his own joke as she turns back to the bag she’s still filling with the notes and ideas she can’t bear to leave behind.

“How are you holding up?”

The question tacked on to the end of his last statement is incongruous enough to give her pause.

“Looking forward to sleeping in.” She offers cautiously. She hadn’t given it much thought, isn’t expecting to actually be able to sleep in, but it’s enough of a dream that she’s comfortable putting it into words.

“Good.” He seems pleased in a way she can’t understand. “You deserve a break.”

She’s not sure what to do with that, if she should be meeting it as a challenge or as another careful reminder on his part that she’s the one on the outs this time, that he’s in this with or without her. Either way it pisses her off, but it’s hard to get worked up when she’s this tired, when the look he gives her glimmers with concern.

“It’s good makeup, whatever you bought.” He says under the scrutiny of her indecision and she turns to frown at him wondering how he could possibly know. “I didn’t notice until tonight. The lighting in the studio’s brutal.”

She sighs at that. She’s been steering clear of the studio as much as she could, preferring to leave walls between them, but tonight the control room had been abuzz, had been too distracting and so she’d stepped into the hall and then later into the studio to give him the notes he’d needed as the broadcast had flown by.

“It’s been a long week.” She reminds him and he nods without judgement. She files that away to pick over later and considers the way he’s still slouched in her doorway. “I should get going.”

“I won’t keep you. Thought I’d check in and see if there was anything I could do, but it seems like you’ve got it under control.”

“Yeah.” She gives her bag an experimental jiggle, before leaning to grab her binder. “I do.”

*

“He’s trying you know.”

She doesn’t know why Jim’s offering her this particular observation or why he’s offering it now but it’s clear he’s talking about Will, talking about the way it’s been four months and she still feels like she’s sliding backward. It’s the news, the same news over and over again. Fake News. The travel ban, the rollback of Obama era regulation. She’s seen it before but never like this, never here, never all at once, unrelenting.

“He doesn’t have a clue. You can’t promise to—”

“I’m not talking about the President.” She’d known that, knew he knew she had, but there wasn’t much more either of them could say, here, now.

“I’m trying.” She reminds him because she knows it’s going to come up, because she knew at times he forgot what that meant. “I’m here.”

“I know.” But this isn’t like you, that’s what he wants to say, that this wasn’t like her, but she wasn’t holding a grudge, wasn’t holding out on them.

“You,” Jim keeps talking but she’s stopped listening. She’s spotted Will, one hand on a desk leaning over to see what Tess is working on, leaning toward Tess, but waiting for her. She knew he was waiting for Jim to leave so he wouldn’t feel like he was intruding, like he was interrupting. It was the next phase in his campaign to win her back, give her space, let her talk about him behind his back if she couldn’t do it to his face.

She knows that’s not what he’s thinking, she still knows him well enough to know that, but it’s close enough to what it feels like that she doesn’t care if she sounds a little uncharitable in her head, she certainly wasn’t going to open her mouth and inform Jim that she’d noticed, that Jim as loyal as he was, was acting out of his own best interest the same way Will was.

They’d both keep pressing in their own way. In the beginning, in those first few days neither of them had bothered, but she’d felt it all the same, the pressure, the need to offer some sort of benediction, but it wasn’t benediction either of them needed. It wasn’t forgiveness they were asking for.

*

She hadn’t expected anyone to be here, not this late. It’s well past eleven and he’s the last person she’s expecting to see, but of course it would be him. It would have to be with how miserable she’s feeling.

He doesn’t say anything just knocks on her door, walks in and sets a mug on her desk while she wipes at her eyes and tries to pretend like she hasn’t noticed the way her hands are trembling.

“I thought you might want that.”

Want he says instead of need, instead of you could use that. He’s still being careful, so careful with the way he perches on the cabinet across from her desk, watching her, but not directly, watching her shoulder, watching the way her fingers curl around the mug comforted by the familiarity, the sting of the alcohol in her throat.

“You were a good guy.” She’s not sure she likes the way it sounds so finite, so much like the past tense coming out of her mouth, but it’d been his line for so long, his comfort, that she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah.”

“You were, are.” She tries out when he doesn’t sound convinced. 

She thinks he might have smiled at that, but she doesn’t look up to check. She doesn’t look at him when he’s watching her, she hardly ever does anymore. She prefers to pretend he isn’t, not because she wants him to stop, she doesn’t know what she’d do if he stopped, if suddenly after almost three years he stopped that too, but she’s too afraid of meeting his eye, accidentally, unguarded, too afraid of what she might see, of what he might see when they weren’t supposed to be looking.

“I fucked up.”

“Will.” She sighs, takes another swig. He’s been finding his way into apologizing with increasing frequency, trying to find the words to make her see, make her understand.

She knows he’s sorry, she’s never doubted that, but being sorry never fixed anything, he’d taught her that. Her being sorry, now, tonight, tomorrow, that wouldn’t fix anything either, because she was sorry, was still sorry, maybe as much as he was, but she didn’t know how to say that, how to explain.

“All right.” He says and she relaxes a bit, peeks up a bit from under her lashes to take in his blurry form and sighs again.

“Worst fucking news cycle, huh?”

“They all are.” She wipes at her eyes, rougher this time now that she’s stopped crying, now that she’s sure he’s noticed. “What’s the point?”

“Of what?”

She shrugs. Of being here, him, her, it didn’t matter, one or both or neither. It felt futile tonight like it had so many other nights. It’d happened before, the crushing waves of doubt, but there had been a reprieve or at least the hope of one.

“He donated his quarterly salary to the Park Service.”

Will snorts, toys with the idea of saying something, something else before he speaks. “We could put that in the B-block, after Syria.”

“And Korea.”

“And Korea.” He agrees although they’d covered both tonight, although they both know the Park Service cuts will never make it into a broadcast. They’d had to squeeze the defunding of the UN Population Fund by the State Department into the D-block as an off-hand reference, a list item, one among so many that deserved more attention. Will to his credit had been the one to slip it in, add it to the litany of line items she’d suggested they cut until he’d found a way to smooth the words out, shorten the spaces between them so he had the time to say them, to spit them all out.

“Sloan wants to spend her five minutes on Gucci tomorrow.”

Sloan didn’t. She would’ve heard about that from Sloan, but she smiles indulgently and lets him have his joke, lets him think it might be helping.

“No.” He says it like he’s asking and for a moment she forgets herself and meets his eye, sees the warm concerned look on his face then looks away, skittish.

“Jim still thinks you’re mad.”

“That’s the typical response to—” she stops there and picks up the mug again, curls her hands around it, hangs on to it.

“I made a mistake.”

“Oh,” she starts to say, fuck you, but she hears him move, the almost imperceptible shuffling and resettling that means he isn’t going anywhere.

“We both did, but I don’t think that’s the problem.”

“Yeah.” She breathes it out like a question, like a challenge she can’t quite bring herself to offer.

“I fucked up, fucked up, and then I really fucked up. Scared the shit out of myself.” There’s a note of humor there that she’s not entirely sure is genuine, but it might be, or it might be there for her benefit. “Scared the shit out of you too.”

He says it like he means it, like the silent maybe that hangs off the end isn’t meant for her to reply to, so she doesn’t, she doesn’t say anything while he sits considering.

“You had a lot of catching up to do.”

She doesn’t know why she offers him an out, why she still can’t resist the temptation, why she can’t help but smooth things over even when she isn’t sure anymore, shouldn’t be sure what this is anymore.

“No.” He’s so sure of that, so sure he’s the one that’s messed up and not her. “You did one thing wrong.”

“Will.” She doesn’t know why it’s his name that comes out of her mouth. Why she hadn’t said no or stop or something else entirely. She’s losing control of the conversation and she doesn’t know what to do about that.

“The rest was me. I realized that a little too late.” He continues while she tries to find the words to stop him. No, she thinks, but settles on maybe, the maybe that keeps hanging off the end of everything he says.

“I hurt you. Intentionally,” he insists when she shakes her head, drains the mug to steady herself, “I wasn’t a good guy.”

“No,” she finally manages, wanting to disagree but it sounds so much like she’s agreeing, like that’s not what she meant, that she presses a hand to her eyes, shoulders slumping, and sighs as she hears him get up.

He hovers for a moment, not uncertain, not so much, but waiting, but she can’t look up, doesn’t look up until she can get up to watch his silhouette fading down the hall.

*

She’s supposed to be taking a week off, using the vacation time she’s contractually obligated to take before she loses it all, but she’s sitting in the lobby, in the corner past the entrance to the subway with a cup of coffee, nodding at the staff who happen to glance in her direction as they make their way upstairs.

“I figured you’d have better than what they have next door.” Will gestures with his coffee and drops a small white pastry bag on the table between them. “Got you that instead.”

She watches him, waits to see if he’ll sit before she tugs the bag over by one corner and peers inside, nutella toast with strawberries and bananas from the French bakery around the corner. It wouldn’t keep; he’d be out eleven bucks if she didn’t eat it. Not that that mattered.

“They were out of chocolate croissants?”

“The ones with custard.” He agrees, deciding it’s safe enough to take a seat.

“They have coffee.”

“Not that I like.” He grins at her then and she knows he hadn’t been expecting her, had only anticipated the possibility, the toast he would eat, he was less fond of their coffee; it was too bitter for his taste.

She picks a sliced strawberry off the toast with her nail in an effort not to return his smile.

“I can’t go upstairs.” She reminds him.

“Says who?”

“Charlie.” It’s the closest excuse to hand, a shortcut, and he doesn’t question it.

“You have plans?”

He’d known she was taking some time off but he hadn’t asked her what she’d intended to do, hadn’t said much about the whole thing except to make sure Jim had the information he needed for the week and now it was Monday, when she was supposed to be gone, and yet here he was asking now, making conversation.

“Call and yell at Jim about,” she gestures vaguely and he nods.

“You don’t have to take the entire week.”

She isn’t sure what to make of that. It sounds like an offer, but an offer of what she isn’t sure and she sure as hell doesn’t know what he could possibly mean by it if it wasn’t. Strictly speaking she didn’t have to take any time off, she knew Will knew that, but Charlie had a use it or lose it policy with his staff’s vacation time, they all occasionally needed a break, she understood that, knew Will did too, but he was still suggesting, still offering.

“I can’t work for free.”

He smiles at that, at a joke she isn’t seeing.

“You’re still getting paid.” He reminds her as she picks up a square of toast to frown at it. “How many papers have you read this morning?”

“Two,” she frowns more deeply at the toast, “and a half.”

She’s beginning to see the joke. She won’t watch the broadcasts, Jim doesn’t deserve that sort of scrutiny, but she’d already called him this morning, peppered him with messages, with texts he seemed intent on ignoring.

“I have keys to a place in the mountains.”

“Charlie’s idea?”

“He suggested the Keys. I thought you might prefer someplace a little closer.”

“Without cell reception.”

“With reception and there’s cable and a landline, the internet’s not half bad.”

“That’s not really,” she shakes her head a little hoping that’s enough to put him off but he’s still waiting for an answer, still waiting for something.

“I’m not suggesting I go with you.”

It hurts, not the way he says it, he doesn’t seem to mind, but the fact that he says it, that he feels like he needs to, like that might have been a possibility, once.

“It’s quiet.” He says not pushing, not reminding, but offering although she doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what.

She thinks maybe that’s why he’d made the suggestion in the first place, the thought that she needed something different, someplace different, someplace quiet. He hadn’t meant to intrude, that’s what he’d said when he’d found her the week before pacing an empty conference room trying to get the sound out of her head, the same frantic scrambling she’s heard a thousand times. Usually it didn’t bother her, but that time, that time it had.

She’d been thinking about taking a couple of days off. Things with Comey had settled down and she’d thought maybe, just maybe. It’d been years since she’d taken more than two days, two days not attached to a holiday or a work event in DC or L.A. It’d been years but she’d been considering it, had known between the coverage of Trump’s first one hundred days and Comey’s firing that she’d needed a break, a break from the news, from Will, from the hours they’d both been putting in. She’d known that so she’d left the request form up on her screen as she’d left for the final rundown meeting that night. She’d been a couple of minutes late, distracted, still distracted when they’d gotten the heads up, when the footage had started coming in from Manchester.

It’d stuck with her, even after they’d gotten off the air, after she’d worked through it, processed it enough to include it in the broadcast. Even after, she’d been trapped by the sound of it, the hysteria echoing in her head and she’d needed a moment, not of quiet, the quiet never helped, but a moment, five minutes, when she wouldn’t have to explain away the constant distraction.

She’d found neither solitude nor silence that night, but she had asked for the two days, two days that Charlie had insisted on dragging into five.

“I don’t like quiet.”

“Peaceful.” He corrects his previous statement with the slightest of winces, the corners of his eyes narrowing.

“There’s no lake, there’s about a million trees, but that’s,” he waves a hand, “it’s not the middle of nowhere. They’ll be other people around. I’m sure someone will share their barbecue.”

“Barbecue?” She licks a bit of nutella off the end of one of her fingers and frowns at him.

“Picnics. Sparklers maybe. Memorial Day.” He finishes, realizing suddenly that she’s forgotten. “The place will be packed.”

“Hmm.” She blinks at him blandly, irritated that she hadn’t bothered to glance at a calendar before requesting the time off. She’d asked for a day she’d already had off, Charlie had bumped it over then figured two days wasn’t enough of a work week to bother with. “You don’t have plans?”

“I do.” He doesn’t seem bothered by her asking but he doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t offer and she’s not feeling masochistic enough to ask.

“Getting out of town.” She muses instead, wondering why she can’t quite let it go.

“Yeah.” He shrugs and she raises her eyebrows.

“So what are you doing here?”

“Delivery.” He says. “The keys are in the bottom of the bag. I’ll see you on Monday.”

*

It’s Wednesday afternoon by the time she fishes the keys out of her purse where she’d left them and calls a rental car place. She’s not an anxious driver, but she is out of practice so she’s glad when the place is easy to find, not too far off the highway, according to the GPS and the address listed on the keychain.

She’d packed a bag, just a couple of things and a pair of pajamas, heading out with a bag of takeout in the backseat, and arrived before the food had gotten unforgivably cold.

She’s tempted to jam the key into the lock on number twenty two, the cabin enumerated on the keychain, but she’s not entirely sure how this works, or where in the rows of cabins number twenty two is, so she parks and walks up the small rise to the building with the guest services sign in the window.

There’s laundry facilities and breakfast in the mornings if she’s interested she’s informed. She’d missed the weekly karaoke night, but Friday nights they showed movies in the lounge and on Saturdays there was a community bonfire. There were other things, cookware and that sort of stuff if she needed to borrow anything, they even had spare chargers, but she’s more interested in the wifi password and directions to number twenty two, so the woman behind the desk smiles and says it’s the second cabin in the second row. There’s a spot to park right next to the door and the wifi password is on the nightstand next to the bed. 

The parking spot is more grass than gravel but it is next to the door which opens up into the kitchen with a small attached dining area and a couch she assumes that’s meant to serve as a living room, despite the fact it’s not a one room cabin, but three, bedroom, bathroom, and another seating area with a sleeper sofa and a desk, the quintessential New York home office. Home away from home.

*

MacKenzie. She’s still thinking about that greeting, the Thursday stumble, on Saturday sitting with her mug of coffee on her tiny front porch watching the kids from several cabins down run around.

“Number twenty two?”

The clarification had come quickly on the heels of her confusion and she’d nodded, recovered enough to stumble a bit. “Mac, it’s— Mac is fine.”

MacKenzie. This place didn’t belong to anyone, not anyone she knew. It was a rental, and not a summer rental either, this wasn’t someone’s annual summer pilgrimage.

MacKenzie. Jim hadn’t rented it for her. He wouldn’t have counted on a place like this piquing her interest, and even if he had, a reservation under MacKenzie— and Charlie, she’d considered that, but she’d believed Will when he’d told her he’d suggested the Keys. Florida without the rain they’d had and the wind she was currently enduring. And if not Charlie then—

She’s refusing to think about that. 

*

“You rented me a cabin.” 

She doesn’t know why it’s July by the time she asks, another holiday, another day off past.

“I rented myself a cabin then thought you might be interested.”

That’s a bald faced lie but she doesn’t call him on it. She could, she had every right too but she’s more interested in why he had, not why he was lying about it, she’d figured that part out already. 

“Because you thought I might be interested?”

He blinks at her. Waits. She’s not being antagonistic, accusatory, but he’s still being careful. “You needed some time off.”

“I needed— You don’t get to decide what I need anymore.”

“That’s fair.”

“Fair?” She echoes back, angry that he could think that any of this could be fair.

“I agree with your assessment. I don’t have a say over your life. That’s some shit luck on my part.”

“You—”

“I know you know what I mean.”

He’s so calm, so unperturbed by her flashes of anger, the way it bubbles up under her skin, that she finds herself stopping, breathing. If this were any other conversation she’d expect him to say something about the glory days, make a joke, or perhaps to be honest, because he was comfortable with that kind of honesty now, to tell her he couldn’t stop wanting what he couldn’t have even if he wanted it now, still wanted it now. She knew she could expect that, should expect that, because they were having that conversation. She was a sparkler, a sizzling fuse, but this wasn’t a flashpan. They were talking. He was saying things. She was considering them, considering what he might say, but she isn’t considering, isn’t expecting, “I never stopped. I never could stop. Caring.”

He clarifies when he realizes she doesn’t intend to say anything, can’t say anything because she doesn’t have a clue what she’s supposed to say to that. She knew he cared, damn him, he’d made that abundantly clear since he’d fucked everything up last fall, but she hadn’t been expecting, could never have imagined, “never stopped.”

The echo feels hollow in her ears, sounds angry and confused.

He nods and doesn’t reach for her. That’s abundantly clear to her too, the way he doesn’t reach for her, despite his opposing impulse. She wonders when that had become a thing, when she’d started noticing, when she started letting herself remember what it felt like for him to touch her, for him to be able to reach her.

“Fuck you.” She says because she doesn’t know what else to say, because it hurts, the ghost of their past. It hurts but the words don’t because they’re quiet, almost sad, almost like she was wishing she could walk out, but she’s still standing there and she’s not sure what to say about that either.

*

“There’s not going to be a story.” She reminds him, irritated that he seems to think they’re going to have a source fall from the sky, that someone from the White House is going to want to talk to them after the coverage they’ve been airing on the administration, like anyone is going to trust them after Genoa.

“You’ll figure it out.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Mac.”

“All right, you tell me. What should I do? What’s going to make this story materialize out of thin air.”

“Optimism.” He suggests and she frowns at him waiting for an explanation. “It used to be your thing.”

“Until you appointed yourself director of morale.”

“And fired myself the same night.”

She forgoes mentioning that he’d fired her too, fired her for real, although that wouldn’t matter now, there wasn’t any point in antagonizing him even if right now she’s irritable and exhausted. “It’s 2017. Optimism’s for the reckless.”

“So what now, it’s dead?”

He’s genuinely curious, dissatisfied with her shrug. He wants an answer even if she can’t give him the one she wants. He’s not worried about the show, the news didn’t need her blind optimism, but he seems to think he does.

“What if that’s what makes it important? It’s reckless resistance.”

“Futile.” She suggests and he makes an aggravated noise, low and unobtrusive.

“Someone out there has to trust us. People are still watching the show.” He reminds her. “One of those people knows something, maybe not about the campaign, but there’s enough going on with this administration. Don’t give up on me.”

It’s a double edged knife, his last remark, hot and sticky like the air outside, oppressive. She lets it sit, doesn’t answer while he waits for her retort.

“We’re not going to hear anything.” She insists when he finally glances away, toward the door to her office, weighing his options. “It could be months, most likely years. We won’t be the ones breaking the story. If you’re hoping for anything else, go out there and find your own source. I don’t have anything to offer.”

*

It’s Thursday night and she’s sitting in a bar alone. She knows that’s her own fault but she hadn’t been the one to pick a fight even if she had been the one to invite Jim out in the first place. She’d thought better of it, but she’d asked him anyway so here she was damp from the rain, poking at an olive with a toothpick.

“Towel.” The towel makes an appearance before Will does, the whole of him sliding onto the stool next to her before she looks over. “I brought you an umbrella too.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just looks at him then goes back to her martini. Jim had gone back to the office then; he wasn’t nearly as furious as he’d seemed when he’d walked out. There was that at least.

“You want a drink?”

“If you don’t mind the company.”

She did, she thought, perhaps, but he was here and Jim wasn’t and she was the kind of miserable that meant she preferred company so she shrugs and lets him stay hoping there isn’t much he wants to say, because she’s been there done that and she doesn’t feel like having another fight.

“Jim hasn’t learned to keep his mouth shut.” It’s not a question so she doesn’t answer, doesn’t dare answer because she can never tell anymore which one of them is meddling, or if it’s not that at all and she’s suddenly found herself too old to be this exhausted all the time.

She takes a swig of her drink, swallows too much and has to stop herself from choking before draining the almost empty glass against her better judgement.

“Tomorrow’s Friday.”

She supposes she’s supposed to find some comfort in that and she might have if this administration hadn’t developed a habit of dropping bombshells at the start of the weekend.

“What’s the—” she stops and shakes her head before gesturing for another drink.

“You could tell him to take a couple of days off.”

“Who?” She asks, figuring the mention of the weekend had meant a change in subject, but she turns out to be wrong, again, another misstep in a week full of miscalculations.

“Jim. If you need a break from the—” He stops, takes a sip from his recently arrived drink and doesn’t continue. She’s probably glaring more than she should, but she’s not exactly in the mood to be charitable, and Will at least knows when to shut up.

“You meddled with him and Maggie. There’s a chance that—” He starts cautiously then holds up a hand, placating, when she glances over at him.

“What did Maggie ever do to him?” It’s a valid question; what sort of comparison did he think he was making, what parallel did he think he was drawing? He hadn’t broken her heart. He hadn’t even blown a hole through her chest. He’d pointed a shotgun at her and somehow hadn’t realized it was loaded when he’d pulled the trigger. She wasn’t bleeding anymore but she was still picking out the shot, picking out the shrapnel and closing up the smaller innumerable weeping wounds.

“I don’t want you to lose him because of me.”

She glances at him, and then looks again. He isn’t looking at her, isn’t watching her. He’s running his finger down the side of his glass, contemplative.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He asks and he genuinely seems to want to know.

“Yes.” She insists a little sharply and she’s surprised to see him smile at that, a quick upturn at the corner of his mouth.

“Well I’m relieved.”

“No you’re not.” 

She doesn’t know why she’s picking at him. He’s not in a much better mood than she is, but she can’t resist.

“Relieved implies I was worried. Not relieved then.” He doesn’t take the bait, ceding her point with a nonchalance she hadn’t expected. He’s not worried about Jim and he’s certainly not worried about what’s going on inside her head as he takes another sip of his drink and turns to study her for a moment before continuing. “Scared then maybe.”

He says it so casually, like he’s throwing it out there for her to decide, like the outcome is inconsequential, that for a moment she doesn’t know what to think.

“Maybe.” She agrees finally, reluctantly, unwilling to cede the ease with which he’d so easily claimed the emotion she’d been running from for months, because she was scared. She couldn’t deny it anymore, but that didn’t mean she wanted to admit it, even if Will would remind her, kept reminding her that sometimes he was too, that she wasn’t alone, and maybe that was the problem because she’d been alone when she’d thought she wouldn’t have to be, when she’d finally let herself believe that believing otherwise wasn’t some sort of blind optimism, when he’d gotten scared and fucked it all up, and now scared wasn’t a thing she wanted to be. It certainly wasn’t something she wanted him to be.

“I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

“Little late for that.” She can’t help but toss back but he’s not bothered by that either as he shakes his head at her.

He’s quiet, not saying anything, but he’s not contemplative like he had been earlier, he’s obviously waiting to see what else she has to say, what else she wants to throw at him, but it takes her a while, turning his words over in her head to realize.

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” She scrunches up her face and sets her drink down on the bar as he turns back toward her.

“I’m an ass. Don’t give up on me. I’m trying. Or possibly just what it sounds like, I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

“Goodbye but not goodbye.”

“No.” He says and then more emphatically. “Fuck. No.” But he doesn’t say Mac, doesn’t say god, so she knows he’s not mad, he’s not mad, but he is serious, he’s been serious, maybe too serious. “I’m not going to hurt you anymore— never again.” He shakes his head a bit at the correction, at his fumbling but she ignores that.

“That’s a relief.” It’s dry and a bit sarcastic. It’s mean and she knows it, hates herself a bit for it, wishes she would just shut up because the only other option is to ask him to leave and she doesn’t want to do that.

“No, it’s not. Not to either of us.” He says honestly, humorlessly, and then a little more warmly. “You voodoo’d some love connection between him and Maggie and now he thinks he knows what a broken heart feels like. He doesn’t have a fucking clue. I told him nicely,” he emphasizes while she listens with growing confusion. “To take his fairytale love story and cram it down someone else’s throat.”

“You what?”

“I didn’t tell him to shove it up his ass.”

That’s so beyond the point she doesn’t bother responding to it. “I spent years trying to convince him that fairytales come true and you,” she pauses to take a breath, “god I could hit you.”

“He’s dating someone else.”

“Because he’s a moron.” She says a little too loudly and watches a couple of heads turn in her direction. “He’s a total idiot.” She continues more quietly after a moment and then laughs. “Is that why you two were giving each other side eye earlier?”

“We were not.”

“Yes you were. Is that why?”

“No. No that’s not why.” He continues and then stops, but she’s frowning at him now, curious enough about what he isn’t telling her that she’s not going to let this go and he knows it. “No, that was after he came back to the office and said you were sitting in Hang Chews without an umbrella despite the fact it was pouring out and I asked him if he knew how stupid he was, leaving you like that, and he said a couple of things, and I said some other things and eventually he said if I wanted to pick a fight I was more than welcome to. I don’t think he meant with you though.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Earlier.” She says a little exasperated because she can’t tell if he’s stalling or if he actually doesn’t have a clue. “You two, all day, and,” she continues more hesitantly, “yesterday too.”

“Oh that,” he considers obviously stalling now, “that was Jim plotting my untimely death.”

“Because?”

“In case I wanted to mark the anniversary of my spectacular fuckup with another fuckup and seeing as he doesn’t have a clue what actually happened, he doesn’t have a lot of other preventative options.”

“The,” she slides her empty glass back across the bar thinking and then feels her stomach twist when she realizes it had been a year. Yesterday had been the sixth. 

“Shit.” She says and then shakes her head.

That isn’t something she really wants to talk about. There isn’t anything else to say about it. They’ve been talking about it and avoiding the subject by turns for the last three hundred and sixty five days. She’d spent the better part of an hour arguing about it with Jim tonight.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

She looks at him, glancing at him sideways, but he seems serious. It’s a genuine offer, a crazy one she thinks given the weather, but he seems to know she’d appreciate the change in topic, the change in scenery. “It’s raining.”

“It looks like it’s stopped.”

“What if it didn’t?”

“I’ll hail you a cab.”

It’s a reasonable option so she shrugs. She’s probably had enough to drink by now, more than enough, so leaving was the best option even if leaving with him might not be.

She watches him throw some cash on the bar and then follows him out the door, up the street and around the corner. They’re headed away from her place and the office so she figures he’s just wandering.

“Did you want to smoke?”

He glances at her then smiles, stepping out in front of her to cross the street. “Did you?”

“No, why would you—?”

“I figured there was a reason you were asking.”

“Walking isn’t really your thing.” Their exchange is lazy, slower than their usual banter, if any of their recent conversations could even qualify as such.

“I thought the fresh air might be nice.”

“For me.” She almost misses his shrug in the glare from the lights around them, bouncing off the puddles at their feet a little too bright, but she catches it out of the corner of her eye, the way the distinction seems not to matter to him. When had that started?

“You’re worried about me.”

“I know,” he pauses and she knows what he’s not saying, how deliberately he’s not qualifying what he’s about to say, “I don’t have the right to—”

“I know I said,” she’s surprised how rough the words feel, how rough they must sound because they’re harder to say than she’d expected. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

“Mac, I wasn’t—”

“No.” She sighs fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose, shove the words back in her mouth and swallow them down. She’s been having the same fight with Jim over and over again and it burns. “I can’t tell you how to feel.”

“You can ask me to keep my mouth shut.”

“When has that ever worked?” She’s surprised by the laugh that bubbles up, quick and effervescent. It’s not amusement, but it’s not tinged dark with irony either.

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t ask him for what, just lets him keep step beside her for a while.

“Did you want me to walk you home?”

“You weren’t headed somewhere?”

“The Waldorf’s in a couple of blocks.” He picks the landmark at random glancing at her.

“We missed the consulate.”

“Saks is probably closed by now.”

“Mmm.” She agrees with that. “I shouldn’t be out this late on a school night. I should be all right getting back.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

*  
It’s been a long week more than it’s been a rough one, but she had had a couple of scared staffers on her hands, the new intern unnerved and jumpy, the rest more dismissive of the police tape, muttering about the bomb threat and the disruption to their morning commutes. That had passed. Even so she’s exhausted on Friday, sluggish and a little bleary eyed by the time she’s ready to leave.

She’s been watching her country and the institution she loves slowly fall to pieces, the steady thrum of lying, liar, lies, still so omnipresent she knows she doesn’t have to explain to Will what it is that’s tearing her apart tonight when he appears to sigh in her doorway.

“Headed home?” He asks instead of telling her she should and she shrugs.

He’s walked her home a couple of times since that night at Hang Chews, pausing outside her building while she fumbled for her keys, but he doesn’t offer tonight and she doesn’t ask. She might need the company but she doesn’t want it. She’s spent too much time this week dealing with explosive things, with the fear and the feelings and everything else.

“It’s going to be all right.”

It’s another of his lines, one that’s stopped meaning anything because she isn’t sure what it’s supposed to mean, if it refers to her, or the world, or to them and that’s not something she wants to think too much about tonight.

She sighs and swallows down an <em>I—</em> the start to a sentence she knows she shouldn’t finish, because thank you isn’t going to mean what he wants it to mean, because he’s here and she appreciates that but not in the way she knows he wants her to.

“We’re going to have to—”

“Monday,” he cuts her off gently, “or at least Sunday. Take a day, Mac.” It’s a request as much as it’s an order. She knows he knows she’s been working straight through, six and a half days, Sunday morning the only time she allows herself to sleep the way she knows she should.

This wasn’t Baghdad, Jim had reminded her a couple of weeks back and she’d almost laughed, because this wasn’t a warzone. It didn’t feel anything like that. She almost wished that it did, that she could explain away everything else with that, with the fact that someone somewhere was at war and she was witnessing the damage, standing as living proof to the horror of it all, but she hadn’t been that lucky this time standing at the epicenter of her life.

“If you need—” He starts but she shakes her head, cutting him off.

“I’ll get some sleep.”

*

It’s strange the feeling of being half-awake knowing somewhere in the back of her head that she’d fallen asleep sitting up. Her mind automatically places her in Jinnan International, Sabiha Gokcen, Heathrow, an airport then, definitely an airport, but the rest of it slides away from her, tugs her back toward sleep. She’s warm and almost lying down now, a luxury, someone running their fingers through her hair, Will— 

She blinks and yawns, forces herself to settle back down, fein sleep. Definitely Will, definitely an airport, but JFK, she can remember that now. Her flight, and coincidentally his, delayed, or cancelled, she wasn’t sure it hadn't been cancelled, due to the weather, the wind or the rain, she didn’t particularly care which, or why. 

She was supposed to be in Chicago, already in Chicago with her family. And Will, he’d been headed back to Nebraska, one last visit born of the guilt of a disintegrating family. She’d been looking forward to the two days off, she doubted he had been, but neither of them had intended on being stuck here, still in New York, although he seems not to mind nearly as much as she does.

He’s content, she realizes, thinking she’s asleep, thinking he can have her just for this moment. The two of them, quiet, together, lost in their own thoughts. She doesn’t want to think too much about that, doesn’t want to think too much about the feeling of his fingers in her hair and so she yawns again, stretches, and he stops, lays his hand on her shoulder to still her with a quiet, “careful.”

Their bags were still stacked in front of them, the seat next to her occupied, her back stiff from the unforgiving seat, the awkward angle she’d been lying at. She’d been asleep for a while then, but she still feels exhausted, almost groggy with the weight of it. The coffee Will passes her as she sits up is welcomed with both hands and a thankful sigh.

*

She has a sneaking suspicion that he’d upgraded her seat when she’d been asleep but she has no way to prove it and she hasn’t asked him, too distracted by the slew of messages coming through on her phone to consider anything else. The kids were sick, the roads from Milwaukee were bad, first one delayed flight then another, no one else had made it to Chicago and it didn’t sound like anyone would.

Will buys her a coffee and leaves her sitting at an empty gate to sort through the deluge, the impending heartbreak of it all, while he— she isn’t sure at first what he’s up to, he’d told her what it was but she’d hardly heard him. She’s distracted, so distracted that she doesn’t register the fact that he’s changed his flight to spend the day with her until they’re both climbing into the same cab, their luggage shoved into the trunk.

*

“Room service.” He says sliding his card across the counter at reception when they’re asked to put a card on file for incidentals and she doesn’t question it. He’d tried to ask about a second room, one of the ones they wouldn’t be needing with her here alone, but she’d brushed him off.

She didn’t want him close, not that close, not really, but she didn’t want to be alone and she wasn’t sure she wanted to explain that. <em>There’s two beds.</em> She’d said instead and that had been enough.

*

She’s all right in the shower, and later wrapped in the hotel robe. She’s all right until she reaches for her pajamas tucked into the crevices of her suitcase and feels the swell of emotion, the tightness in her chest. She’d packed a dress, a pair of jeans and a blouse. She still had the clothes she’d worn to the office, enough to mix and match for a couple of days. Everything else she’d shoved into the remaining space, fit in around the presents she’d so carefully tucked into place alongside each other.

It’s not just her family, although she’s trying to pretend it is, pretend it’s about the empty rooms surrounding hers and the phone calls that have stopped coming, but it’s about Will too. She knows that even if she doesn’t want to say as much, about him being here, about all the times he hadn’t been there, about all the Christmases she thought she’d be spending with him.

He breathes out close behind her, having moved nearer as she’d reached to press her hand against her face. He’s still dressed in his clothes from the day before, his sweater soft as it brushes her still bare arm, her t-shirt hardly a barrier against the warmth of his body, a hand first on one shoulder and then the other before his arms wrap around her.

He doesn’t pull her close, closer, but she turns and steps nearer, tucks herself against him because it’s the only thing that might stop her from sobbing, from crying, and maybe, never stopping.

She doesn’t want that. Not today. Not when she was supposed to be thinking about the things that she has and not the things she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to think about that, but somehow it’s there in the space between them, the space she can’t quite fit herself into. 

Stop, she wants to say although not to him, never to him, but to herself maybe, finally, stop overthinking, stop wondering, stop being afraid. She just wants to stop, stop hurting like this.

“I ordered you breakfast.” He says softly to the knock on the door that startles her, and he had, just one plate that he slides onto the table across from the bed, slicing pancakes and bacon, sliding a portion onto the extra plate he must have asked for.

She isn’t hungry, she doesn’t want to eat, but she takes the almost empty plate from him and sits beside him on the end of the bed poking at the food. 

She takes a couple of bites but he’s the one doing most of the eating, making his way through the first of the pancakes before reaching over to spear a piece off of her plate and hold it out to her.

She eats it, which seems to be as much permission as he’s looking for because he does it again without glancing at her, just reaches over and scoops up a sliver of bacon and then another slice of pancake until she’s eating by herself, not with any enthusiasm, or at any great speed, but she’s eating and he’s smiling to himself when she glances over at him.

*

She leans back on the bed and curls up a bit as he finishes eating, humming in contentment as he scrapes the crumbs from his plate. He’s always loved food in a way she’s never allowed herself too. She was the first to admit she didn’t eat particularly well, but she was careful in some ways, in ways that he wasn’t and she envied him for that sometimes, although now she’s finding it makes her smile, that simple joy somehow contagious so that she falls asleep without the feeling of sudden impending doom she’s grown so used to.

*

She sleeps most of the morning. She hadn’t intended to, but she’d fallen asleep and woken to bright slivers of light peeking through the curtains Will had drawn. He seems to have slept too, the comforter on the other bed rumpled, but he’s sitting by the window now, by one of the slashes of light with a book propped on his legs, his feet on the table.

“Baseball history.” He says when he looks up to find her watching and then grins. “I won’t bore you.”

But she wants him too and she almost tells him that, her throat suddenly thick when she realizes how badly she wants that to be true, how much she just wants to hear him talk about nothing, about anything that lights his eyes up the way that baseball does.

“Oh,” he says softly and she wonders if she’d started to say something, but it isn’t that. He’s noticed that she’s upset, his movement soft and careful as he gets up to settle next to her on the bed.

He’s just sitting there, his arm draped on the mattress over her head, his fingertips ghosting her shoulder blades but he’s there and it’s too much and not enough at the same time. Overwhelming. She turns, pressing her face into the pillow under her head and feels him shift too, leaning closer, speaking softly.

“You should put your dress on.” He says it into her hair in a way that makes her breath catch as it leaves her lungs. “We should go out for a walk. It’ll help.”

It won’t help. It shouldn’t, but it does. The two of them arm and arm because she only has her heels to wear, impractical for anything but a quick trip down the block this time of year. They walk for a while, slowly until she’s cold enough that she’s stopped being able to feel her toes, and she can feel him flex his fingers as they pass yet another corner.

It hadn’t turned into much of a walk, and it’d been even less of a conversation but she is calmer afterward, shedding her dress to return to the pajamas she’d spent the day in, another luxury she hasn’t had in years.

*

He’s supposed to be leaving she realizes as she wakes to the quiet sounds of him moving around the room, gathering his things, and she’s suddenly desperate to stop him. She’s leaving tonight, catching a late flight back to New York, but she can’t bear the thought of spending the day alone, not without him.

“Will.” She says and then she almost stops herself but he’s already turned to look at her expectantly, waiting for something else.

“Do you have to— what time’s your flight?”

“Later.” He moves closer, in and out of the light, so it’s hard to tell how much truth there is in that. “Should I stay a while?”

“Could you? I mean—” She sighs and closes her eyes for a second, trying to find the words she needs but there isn’t anything there but please, please god and anyone else who might be listening, because she’s scared but also alone and she’s not sure what to do with either of those facts right now, in the dark when both of them should still be sleeping, because she’d stopped calling him at four AM years ago.

“Go back to sleep.” It’s soft, almost chiding, but warm with a smile she can’t see. “I’ll find us some coffee.”

*

She considers for a second trying to convince herself that it’s the coffee beside the bed that she’s happy to see, but she knows denial’s never been her strong suit. She’s relieved he’s still there. She can’t see him, but she can hear him shuffling around. It’s still dark enough that she considers rolling over and peeking but she has a feeling he’d know she was awake if he didn’t already.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t miss him when he wasn’t there. She’d never entirely been able to stop missing him even when he was standing right there in front of her. Missing him now just hurt in a different way than it used to.

“Will?” She yawns and feels the air around her move as he steps suddenly closer, the blanket around her tugged back up into place.

She knows she’s exhausted, knows she could use the sleep but she’s suddenly terrified of waking up and finding him gone, even for a moment. He’s staying, he has to be, it’s late enough now that he must be but she’s worried enough that she doesn’t ask, relieved when she feels the bed dip beside her.

“I found a deli.” He murmurs, “there’s lunch in the fridge if you’re up for it.”

She’s not particularly awake but she nods and stretches and convinces herself to crawl out from under the covers because lunch wasn’t the only thing that he’d found. There’s coffee and a stack of papers waiting on the table by the window, a couple of books she knows he hadn’t had stashed in his suitcase.

“You went shopping.”

“I stopped a couple of places.” He shrugs and she frowns because she knows there’s something he isn’t saying. “I bought a couple of things.” He continues but she knows by then that she’s staring at him with a look that says she obviously isn’t buying it.

“Everything’s back in New York.” He says with enough weight that she almost reconsiders insisting on an answer, because she knows what he means, the past, their baggage. The last two days haven’t been perfect, but it’s been more than they’ve had in years and there’s a part of her that’s scared of giving that up. She can’t stand the thought of having another day she has to pretend never existed.

“I wanted you to have something. The other,” he waves his hand dismissing whatever small gift he’d picked up for her, almost like an afterthought, although she knows the gift is anything but. She’d agonized over what to get him, wanting it to mean something as much as she didn’t. She knows it couldn’t have been any easier for him, yet here he was having picked something out, picked it up in the span of a morning.

“You’re missing a bit in your collection.” He says as her breath freezes in her chest at the sight of the box. The sight of the box from whatever jewelers he’d found that was open the day after one of the biggest holidays of the year. 

She knows it isn’t a ring, the box is the wrong size and she knows he wouldn’t do that to himself, wouldn’t do that to her, but she knows what it means, what it could mean if she wanted it to, this apology, promise, hopeful gift. It could be nothing or everything.

She stares at it for a moment before reaching for it. She knows he knows she’ll spend a small fortune on shoes. They’re her one thing, so while most of her jewelry is expensive, it’s almost all been gifts, almost all from him.

They’re beautiful. Three small rose gold spheres connected by a thin chain, no diamonds. He hadn’t wanted to push things, but the earrings were still here. She looks at them then glances at him, finds she can’t look away once he’s met her eye.

She normally didn’t let people mess with her ears. She’d spent enough time pressing sharp edges into the soft skin, having them repierced, that the thought makes her recoil.

Will knows that. He also knows he’d managed to make himself an exception to the rule in the same way he had with so many other things, so she doesn’t think twice when he brushes her hair from her shoulder and offers her a small smile, one of the ones that sits on his face with a little bit of humor.

She knew the earrings meant he wasn’t scared anymore, of whatever she made of the two of them, of whatever she wanted it to mean. That should be a comfort, she knows that, but it terrifies her, the thought that he could somehow live with the two of them not meaning anything, of him letting her go.

She knows he’d made the right call last year insisting that she stay. She’d been hurt and scared, was still, at times, scared, but leaving would’ve been worse even if she hadn’t seen it at the time. She’d only wanted the pain to stop. She hadn’t understood how much worse it could get, how much better it might be if she stayed.

She doesn’t want to tell him yes, not to the earrings or anything else, but she’s not saying no either and she certainly isn’t going to tell him that the fingers brushing the side of her neck have all but melted her back into the bed.

“Beautiful.” He mutters when the earrings are in place and she knows better than to ask if he means them or her, because she knows what he’ll say, he’s not about to lie to her, but it’s been a year since he’s said anything like that and she knows now, here, isn’t a good place for him to start.

“Yeah,” she agrees, absently reaching up to brush one of the earrings with her fingers. “They are. Thank you.”

*

She isn’t sure how it happens exactly, how she ends up leaving the office early enough that it makes sense to take him up on his offer, but she knows Jim must have been involved because Will’s surprised enough to see her walking out of the elevator that she knows he hasn’t planned on offering even as he does.

She hasn’t spent much time at his place, has only been here a couple of times since the party the night of the bin Laden broadcast, so she’s not surprised she’s picking up a lot of little details, things that she’d missed, picking them up and ignoring him because it’s easier that way even when he steps a little too close to set her drink on the mantle beside her.

She’s irritated, she’s been wound up too tight for a while now, but it’s not with him, the one saving grace in all of this. She knows she doesn’t have to, but she should keep her temper in check around him. She feels a responsibility now for his feelings, for protecting them in a way, ever since he’d given her the earrings, the ones she keeps wearing because she feels vulnerable without them, the same way she feels about him now, about holding his feelings so carefully in her hands.

“You can throw that if it’ll help.” He says it softly, standing too close, his hand brushing an earring and she knows he must know he’s too close, that he needs to take a step back because he’s not standing directly beside her but behind her a bit, leaving room for her to slip past him between the mantle and the warmth of his body.

She wants to lean into him, into that warmth. Her skin aches with the desire, but she’s playing keep away, she knows she is now, knows that that’s the game they’re playing.

“That won’t fucking help.” She says flatly hoping her choice of words more than anything will keep him away but she hears him huff, a quick puff of air, and knows she’s miscalculated.

He hasn’t moved any closer, there isn’t much closer he could get, but he’s shifted toward her, turned his attention more completely to the way she’s fidgeting, restless.

“Things aren’t going so well, huh?” He says and she’s not entirely sure that it’s a question and not an observation. She’s been having a rough time, she knows she’s not done the best job hiding it, but she still recoils from the thought that anyone’s noticed, that anyone’s noticed enough to comment on it so blatantly.

“It’s been—” she starts but he shakes his head and she stops.

“It’s all right.”

“It’s not—” she starts again but then bites her tongue because she knows what he means, knows he knows that too. It’s all right, she doesn’t have to lie to him, protect his feelings, pretend.

She knows he’d invited her here for a drink to give her some space, the privacy they’d never be afforded at Hang Chews or anywhere else. She’s not an idiot, she knows he wouldn’t want to draw that kind of attention to either of them because there is a frustration simmering under them, a frustration that she knows is almost entirely of her own doing.

“It’s just, it’s bullshit.”

“It is.” He says, not ‘I know’ or ‘all right’, or any of the things she’d expect him to say.

It’s not as if he’s spent the last year trying to convince her everything was all right, far from it, but he had always insisted on trying to see things from a different point of view, one that was more aloof, less concerned with the minutiae, with the nitty gritty minute to minute details. He was looking at the bigger picture, the way the country had survived worse, the way, that in some ways, they’d both survived worse, but the thought of that, dredging up the memories, digging up ghosts had only ever made things worse, or so she’d thought.

“It’s bullshit and there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“That’s not,” she opens her mouth to continue and then stops when his finger skirts her chin, brushes against the side of her jaw in a way that’s entirely distracting.

“Come outside with me for a minute.” He raises his eyebrows asking, although it seems unlikely he’s going to let her argue.

She frowns at him and he lets her consider the offer before she shrugs and steps around him.

She’s expecting to be following him down the hall to the elevator and back out through the lobby but he leans over and opens a door to the balcony, gesturing for her to lead the way.

She’s barefoot, without a coat. She’s freezing. She can still feel the heat coming off him, warm, as she steps closer despite herself. She needs it now as much as she wants it, not questioning the way she steps closer, curling suddenly into the space between his jacket and his sweater, his breath, a quick laugh warm against the top of her head.

He’d left his jacket on, his shoes. She’d left hers by the elevator, a blazer, all she ever bothered with in this overheated indoor metropolis, hardly any protection against the cold, but then he’d known that when he’d brought her out here, found a way to quite literally cool her anger.

She was angry, she knew that. She’d been angry for a long time, not just with him, but with the world, with everyone else too and she doesn’t have a place to put that, hadn’t been sure what to do with it, but he’d known, he’d figured it out.

“A little better?” He asks, wrapping his arms around her as she curls her toes down into the cement, before shifting her weight to slide her feet up against the edges of his shoes, her weight on her heels, her body tipped toward his so that his arms provide the counter balance keeping her steady.

“No.” She says although that’s as much of a lie as everything else.

“Just a tiny bit.” He says and he’s not asking this time, he knows, but she still can’t agree, not quite, even if she’s tempted too.

She almost says yes, tempted to see if he suggests they go inside but he does that anyway, one arm dropping to his side the other pressing gently against her shoulders to usher her in.

She’s still cold, shivering a little as they settle onto the couch. His coat and shoes discarded she presses closer than she normally would allow. He’s quiet, letting her settle in, and she finds that she is too. It’s not silence and it’s nothing like the peace she’s been missing, but there’s a stillness there that feels foreign to her as she sighs and lets her eyes drift closed just for a second.

*

She needs to slow down, she can see that now. She’d been hurtling through the dark hoping for a way out but the only thing that’s going to do is land her with a broken neck. She can’t keep going, not this fast, not for so long. Despite that, she knows she’d rather keep going, keep moving, she’d always been like that. If only someone would just turn the lights back on, but she knows that isn’t going to happen, not any time soon. Not even Will could manage that even if he was the one that had been slowing her down, not holding her back, not dragging her down, but coaxing her into putting the brakes on once in a while: stopping for dinner somewhere, popping into a bookstore, having drinks at his place that were less about the drinks and more about whatever other distraction he’d come up with.

He’d been like that before. She remembers the feeling more than the specifics, more than she remembers the dinners and the laughter and everything else, because that’s still too painful and he’s mindful of that, careful even if she’s finding that she has new memories to replace the old ones, memories that still sparkle with feelings she can’t yet identify.

She can laugh at his jokes now, lets herself enjoy the build up, the warmth that sizzles through her when his eyes light up right before he says something clever. He’s always loved making her laugh, but there’s a different sort of pleasure that he finds in it now.

She wants to ask him to stop, because it hurts going back to her empty apartment, to her mess of an office, but she knows even unvoiced he’s noticed the impulse on her part. It makes him quiet, stills him a bit, but that only seems to make it worse, only settles her more, so that the chaos chafts, pokes more roughly at her tender skin.

She’s giggling, full on laughing at something he’d said and he’s laughing too, eyes shining, the drink in his hand shivering a bit before he sets it down and steps over to join her. 

She hasn’t had anything to drink, she realizes with a start. He’d poured himself a drink and had a sip, but he hadn’t been able to pour her one before she’d decided to take the piss out of him.

She wonders what he’d chosen, what he thought he’d be drinking. She hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice and she can’t smell it on his breath when he steps closer.

“What are you thinking?” He asks her, teasing a little because she’s still laughing and she shrugs, smiles.

“What’s your whiskey taste like?”

“Do you want to find out?”

She doesn’t know what she’d expected his answer to be. She’d asked an odd question, she’d known that before she’d said anything, but she hadn’t quite expected this even if she’s not entirely surprised. She knows he’s not offering to retrieve the glass he’d left behind. He doesn’t have any interest in that, and as much as she might, still, say that she does, they both know she doesn’t, not when he’s looking at her like that, his eyes suddenly soft, and always so warm, his touch light on her arm.

“I,” she considers his offer, lets the possibility of it sparkle for a moment in her mind, because there’s memories there too, warm safe feelings, the feeling of him closer, so much closer than he has been in so long. She wants that, she knows she does, she’s been thinking about it for weeks now, but she knows that’s not what he’s offering. It wasn’t a distraction, he wouldn’t allow it to be. He’d tried that and found it empty, she knows he had. Woman after woman, had only made things worse, he’s not about to suggest she do the same, but she still wants to tell him yes, let him pull her closer so she smiles, the corners of her mouth twitching and shrugs.

“Tease,” he whispers but she knows he doesn’t mean it, that he’s trying not to laugh at the way she can’t help but shift closer, whimper when his hand brushes her cheek.

Her eyes flutter shut and she stops trying to force them to stay open when she feels herself sigh again, feels his breath warm on her skin, because this is a dream she’s had for so long she doesn’t want it to end. It isn’t a fairytale, they’ve both had too much heartbreak for that, but it isn’t the nightmare she’d feared it might be because they’re both still standing here together and she has enough faith now to believe that it might last if she just slows down long enough to let it. If she just slows down long enough to let him kiss her.


End file.
